


the sensation of falling

by madasaboxofcats



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Swan queen if you squint, TW: suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasaboxofcats/pseuds/madasaboxofcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She has always been reckless with her life."</p><p>My way of explaining why Regina gave her heart to Robin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sensation of falling

**Author's Note:**

> Just to reiterate my warning in the tags above: suicide is discussed here. It's never really stated outright, but heavily implied. Please be aware.

She has always been reckless with her life.

The first time, she tries to find freedom over the side of her bedroom balcony.

(She had first tried to find her freedom in Daniel, in running far, far, far from her mother’s grip, in becoming the wife of a stable boy and being happy and finally, _finally_ being enough.)

(So much freedom crushed on the hay-strewn floor, destroyed by the tattling mouth of a child.)

(Children, she had learned so many times – bruises from the vines, thick and dark and painful reminders of her mistakes – were culpable for their actions.)

The air whips over her, adrenaline pumping, and there’s no more sadness, no more _Daniel_ , no more Leopold or Snow or mother or father or power or magic or queenly duties. Just no more. 

She is flying into nothingness and it is blissful.

When the fairy catches her, she tries not to let her disappointment show. 

Later, she will say that she fell, and because no one knows her, no one will see through her lie. She will say that she fell, but won’t confess how delicious falling felt, or how much she’d like to do it again.

 ---

He tells her often that magic is dangerous.

_Magic always comes at a price._

She does not care.

She welcomes it.

\--- 

There is a curse and a plan and a purpose and she becomes less careless and more purposeful.

Make them suffer the way that she has.

Make her suffer.

As revenge consumes her, she finds a reason to live (but the sensation of falling haunts her dreams).

\---

In Storybrooke, after two years, three months, and seventeen days of mind-numbing sameness, she tries again.

She is drunk on wine and deadened hope and sadness as she climbs up to the roof to stare at the stars and wish things were different.

She doesn’t have a balcony (foolish design on her part, she thinks) but the roof is plenty high and should do the trick.

She sways, back and forth, and she isn’t sure if her balance wavers because of the alcohol or the temptation before her, but she walks across the roof anyway, daring her body to betray her (she isn’t sure if betrayal would be falling or staying upright). The air is crisp and she is alone.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She was supposed to be happy – finally happy, finally free – and they were supposed to be miserable.

Anticipating happiness and getting numbness is its own kind of hell and she is as trapped here – in a cage of her own making – as she was in her father’s house, her mother’s embrace, her husband’s bed.

When she hits the ground, she feels pain radiate through her, but only for a moment. She wakes up the next morning in her bed without a scratch or a bruise.

This is her curse.

\---

Henry changes everything.

Her son needs a mother.

No more falling.

\---

Losing Henry changes everything, too.

He is happy, she knows that, knows that she’s given him a lifetime of happy memories and that Emma will create new happy memories with him, but he is happy without her and every breath she takes feels like drowning.

It’s too much.

She is not this strong.

It is a rational decision, she tells herself, a hopeful one (because Emma will find them and Henry will be there and they will find a way to wake her up and life will be worth living again even if it’s years from now and he’s six feet tall, she won’t care because he’ll be back and safe and there, loving her).

She mixes the potion, does her best to drown out the little boy’s father who insisted on following her, and tries to separate this – this action of hope and rationality – from those born of darkness and desperation. She is not that person. Falling into nothingness does not hold the same appeal that it once did.

(Except it does because once it catches you, you’re never free, not really, and although she’s changed, she’s still the same person and it will always be an intoxicating temptation, letting the wind rush past as the ground gets closer.)

There’s just Henry. Henry and Emma. And the idea that she will wake to their faces, once lost and now found.

But then there’s Zelena and _sister_ and _Cora, what have you done?_ And threats on her happiness and her family and all that she loves.

Once again, revenge proves a thing to live for.

\---

But then they’re in Storybrooke and Henry and Emma are back and a saucer falls to the ground in the face of his blank stare and she nearly collapses then and there, overtaken by heartbreak much like she was 40 years before in a stable in the hay.

He isn’t gone, but he is lost to her now.

(She manages to convince herself, at some point, that it is a good thing that he doesn’t remember her because he doesn’t remember all of the evil she has done, all of the mistakes she’s made.)

(But she would gladly expose those truths again and again and again if it meant that he would remember riding bikes and watching Iron Man when he was sick and cleaning mint chocolate chip ice cream out of his hair when he was 6 and showed his enjoyment for food by covering as much of himself with it as possible.)

She hurts.

The Wicked Witch keeps her busy, keeps her distracted, but it’s not enough, it’s never enough.

When she removes her heart from her chest, she does so knowing that she has two choices.

Give it to Emma and it will surely be safe (not just because she’s the Savior, but because she’s _Emma_ and that means something in the way that she is not just the Evil Queen, but _Regina_ ).

Give it to Robin Hood, her shadow in this new Storybrooke, and risk the same fate that Daniel fell to, the same crushing nothingness.

Nothingness that would, in the end, be preferable to _this_.

(Henry’s eyes not knowing, not seeing, not caring.)

(He has a mother now. He doesn't need her.)

She has always been reckless with her life.

 


End file.
